[dead] Wagons: More train stuff

[JamesOFarrell]

This mod has been re-released in the 5dmin module pack

This is the start of the end for wagons. I've split out liquid wagons into a new mod and will be doing the same with electric locomotives. I may do provider wagons as well but I wont be bothering with the roboport wagon, the accumulator wagon or the battle wagons. For the moment Master Builder has fixed electric locos for 0.11 so I've added that to the download list below. Use this to open your saves in 0.11. I'll leave the old downloads up for a while if anyone wants them but they will not be updated again.

Do not use construction bots to place or remove powered rail.

Do not use filters in provider wagons. Things go funky.

http://gfycat.com/FirmGlassFluke

Download

• v0.0.13 Google Drive
  v0.0.13 Filedropper
  electric locomotives for 0.11.x. Thanks MasterBuilder!

New sprites for some of the carriages curtsey of Allotrope including a new accumulator carriage that looks awesome. I haven't updated the images in the post because lazy but here is a preview (long image may be cut off by forum formatting):

New Carriages

Currently working carriages


Active Provider Carriage, Passive Provider Carriage and Storage Carriage

Gif

These all work as provider chests for a logistic network when they are not moving. They have the same storage capacity as a standard train carriage and work exactly as expected.

Requester Carriage

image

This is the Requester Carriage made possible by the API changes in 0.10. If you try to use this in any other version it will act as a passive provider chest. To set up the filters you need to click on the invisible requester chest like so:

Image

Roboport Carriage

Gif

This works as a portable Roboport, it has a slightly smaller network size than a standard Roboport but should still be useful when setting up new bases or using as a portable repair system. You have to be stopped for the Roboport to be active. Fill the carriage with up to 1 stack of Repair Packs and 7 stacks of robots. The roboport has a limited amount of power (enough for a few minutes of operation so make sure to connect it to the power grid or bring an extra battery). It will be flat the first time you put it down so make sure to charge it up before heading out.

Accumulator Carriage (extra battery)

Image

This is the first of the power network carriages. It works like a normal accumulator but on wheels. When it is stopped it will connect to close by power lines and carriages, sucking down power during from the network (during the day) and offering it back up when the sun goes down or the carriage is unconnected. It should give you enough power to run a couple of Roboport Carriages or an Electric Locomotive for an extended period. It will be flat the first time you put it down so make sure to charge it up before heading out. Also remember, you can power items besides other carriages from the battery, like so:

Image OLD SPRITE

Battle Wagons
These wagons come in 2 varieties, Laser Battle Wagon and Gun Battle Wagon. The Gun Battle wagon is equivalent of 6 gun turrets with an expanded inventory. Mostly useless later game but if better ammo ever gets added to the base game these could be really useful. Laser Battle Wagons are worth 4 laser turrets and chew though the power accordingly, they will work with accumulator carriages but not for long so make sure you are connected to the grid. You will find the items under the combat group.

I've not bothered posting sprites as I have reused some old ones. I have also left the animation on as a test so when the gun is ready they should fold out. It looks a little weird, sorry. These wagons really need some sprites and animation to work without looking really silly.

Electric Locomotive

Image

This is a working electric locomotive, it runs entirely off power provided by the gird (or the Accumulator Carriage). You will need to power the tiles that the loco is on for it to work, you can do this with power poles or the more expensive Power Rail. It has a tiny amount of reserve power if you leave the grid but not enough for anything useful. You can get away with large section of un-powered track as trains take a long time to stop and the Accumulator carriages will add a little extra backup power if placed next to the loco. I suggest making sure your signals are covered by some power though as your loco may never get going again. At the moment the trains use about 700kw when moving (not just accelerating) and nothing when stopped. This is probably too low and will need to be balanced. The electric train is slower with less power than the diesel version but they are 100% pollution free so now if you power your network with solar you will never need to burn coal again.

Power Rail

Images

DO NOT USE CONSTRUCTION BOTS TO PLACE OR REMOVE POWERED RAIL
Power rail will extend your power network without the hassle of running all those wires. Just lay them down and connect one of them to the power network. Once they are connected to the network they should work like small power poles which electrify the tiles the rail is on. You can see the power coverage here:

Coverage

Notes
You need to research Logistics Carriages, Powered Carriages, Battle Wagons and Electric Trains to unlock all the features. The recipes are probably too cheap at the moment and will need to be balanced. Power rail recipes may be to expensive.

Electric trains are in and powered rail are in, the code for liquid storage is in but disabled. Added the requester carriage, made possible by changes in 0.10. If you use it in 0.9.x it will just behave as a passive provider.

Added Battle Wagons. I am not sure about these. They are kind of cool but I don't really think they will ever be useful. If you think different, let me know. If we can't the sprites to look good they will have to come out anyway.

The mod is currents called "Wagons". This is not a great name, any one got any better ideas for a name? How about Carriages? Trains? Trains++? Moar Trains?

Art Assets
Allotrope is currently handling the art so if anyone has any feed back or suggestions I am sure he will be happy to read them. Thanks Allotrope!

Bugs
Powered rail placed by bots is not powered rail.
Powered rail removed by bots will leave behind the power network
Robots and Repair-packs from other mods can be deleted from the game if they end up in the roboport wagon.
Please let me know, I am sure they exist!

Change Log

• 0.0.1: Initial release
  0.0.2: Refactored code and added an accumulator carriage.
  0.0.3: Refactored more code because I like bugs. Added electric locomotives and new sprites. Changes how objects are tracked in game so a bug that no one will have noticed should not happen again
  0.0.4: Added static proxies, allowing for power rail. Also re-wrote the collision detection code because it was so wrong... So so wrong... I don't even know how it worked...
  0.0.5 Fixed small bug in 0.0.4 about the placement of the locomotive power proxy
  0.0.6 Fixed a bug where if you laid power and standard rail in the same place the game would never load your save again.
  0.0.7 Added collision_mask allowing things to work as expected. Reworked power rail, removing power nodes. Added code for liquid storage (it does not work and probably never will but it is ready just in case)
  0.0.8 Added new Accumulator Sprites
  0.0.9 Added requester carriages.
  0.0.10 Added battle wagons, fixed a few bugs, added some new icons.
  0.0.11 Fixed a bug with inventory sync.
  0.0.12 Fixed request chest showing up at start. Increased wagon size to match upgraded .10.x sizes
  0.0.13 Fixed game breaking bug. Rewrote how wagons stored data internally. Changed the way trains draw power. Rebalanced the electric locomotives. more

[Allotrope]

Wow. This, I like this.

I'd love to help out where I could with the modeling/textures. I've never done it before for Factorio, but I'm familiar with Blender and Photoshop.

[Vitduo]

Woooow! This looks cool! Especially wagon-roboport.
Hmm... I have a question: does this roboport use any fuel/energy?

[jorgenRe]

Woooow! This looks cool! Especially wagon-roboport.
Hmm... I have a question: does this roboport use any fuel/energy?

Here is a mod I've been working on the last few days to add some new train carriages. This is a work in progress and is not feature complete. At the moment the roboport carriage is powered by magic.
Bugs
Power generation
Roboport is still selectable. If you hunt around near the carriage with your mouse you should be able to find it. This is for testing only.
Some of the roboports standard behaviour becomes more annoying when you move the roboport or the chests!
other more annoying bugs?

So yea answer is no, just read trough the whole post to get all your answers before asking

[Vitduo]

I missed it

[JamesOFarrell]

Wow. This, I like this.

I'd love to help out where I could with the modeling/textures. I've never done it before for Factorio, but I'm familiar with Blender and Photoshop.

Thanks for that. If you are interested in helping feel free to just dive in. You can see the sprite sheets that need replacing in the Wagons\resources\wagon-colour folders. I really like how gritty the trains look in factorio so maybe keep to that style? but it doesn't really matter to much. At the moment animation is a no go but I have an idea about using the roboport animations, once I have the power issue fixed I'll be looking at that. Here is a link on making a sprite sheet with blender:

http://blender.stackexchange.com/questi ... rite-sheet

does this roboport use any fuel/energy?

As jorgenRe mentioned, it uses is magic. What is worse is if you can find a way to hook the invisible accumulator to your power network you will get free unlimited power... I was going to fix this issue yesterday but instead i spent the day re-designing my train network to use providers and roboports...

[JamesOFarrell]

Progress!



Edit: One more!

http://gfycat.com/AcclaimedNimbleEel

[Allotrope]

Welp, I'm stumped. I can export a sprite sheet of a model (I made an oil tanker wagon to test), but I am unsure of how they got the gritty and pixelated sprites. I could somewhat replicate it in photoshop, but the results were really poor.

Lighting is another thing to keep in mind. The shadows are on the sprite sheets. I'm guessing that I'll have to get the scene lights to move with the camera to get the same effect. I'll have to play around with the angle and intensity of the light though.

It would be amazing if the devs created a reference model/scene. One with the proper lighting and scale. It would make the process much much easier.


Also, the electric train seems to work perfectly! Awesome!

[Allotrope]

The ability to use a powered rail would be very nice. It would have to only provide power to its single tile. Maybe a connection to a power source would be needed every 10 tiles or something?

[JamesOFarrell]

i just finished the code for the electric locomotive. It is working and to test it I have been upgrading my train network to be fully electric. Of course as soon as I finished laying 100s of medium electric poles it I see this post about powered rail... such a cleaner solution. The issue is going to be turns, the power coverage area by poles is square and it can't be changed so either they are going to require a sub station to create or they are going to be a really new cheap way to extend your power network.

I'll finish testing this version, upload it and then I'll add some powered rails to see how they go, if i can get them to balance though it would be a much nicer solution. Also nice sprites, they should look fantastic in game.

Welp, I'm stumped. I can export a sprite sheet of a model (I made an oil tanker wagon to test), but I am unsure of how they got the gritty and pixelated sprites. I could somewhat replicate it in photoshop, but the results were really poor.

This is the issue I had when I was trying to do a model for a KSP mod, I think the trick is dirty a normal map but I could never work it out.

[Allotrope]

This is the issue I had when I was trying to do a model for a KSP mod, I think the trick is dirty a normal map but I could never work it out.

You may be right. In that case it's definitely over my head. :/ (KSP is great)

The issue is going to be turns, the power coverage area by poles is square and it can't be changed so either they are going to require a sub station to create or they are going to be a really new cheap way to extend your power network.

How would turns be an issue? As long as the pole coverage overlaps the track it should provide power right? The coverage of the track could extend one tile out in whichever direction its facing. That could provide the connection to the next piece maybe? There would need to be a way to limit its effect to only other track pieces and the train though.

Also nice sprites, they should look fantastic in game.

Thank you! I'll work on getting the layers separated and named in a more friendly way.

[Allotrope]

I've finished the sprites for the powered rails. I'm still not happy with how they line up, but the standard rails are not very pretty either. :/

Powered Rail Sprites

I have also edited the colored wagons a bit. I replaced the normal green with the new colors. It was just to make it easier to tell them apart.

Re-colored Wagon Sprites

Since modeling a new electric-train would be a nightmare for me, I wanted to see what the existing one looks like with a blue accent instead of red. If anything it could be a placeholder?


I also made this mock drone-wagon thing. The animation for the roboport is an overlay. Perhaps its possible to place it over the wagon and have it animate when needed? The animations would be difficult because of the many possible wagon orientations. Not sure on this.


Here are the edited sprites. Lemme know if I'm missing anything.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B3eGWN ... sp=sharing

[JamesOFarrell]

I've finished the sprites for the powered rails

Looking good. I didn't manage to get any coding done yesterday because of drinking but I have a solid plan for today for approaching the powered rail issue and shouldn't be to much work.

Here are all the carriages in game (and functioning). The image looks cut off to me because of the forum. If you have that issue as well the link here: http://i.imgur.com/d29hE61.png

Wagons

They are looking really good. The electric loco is exactly the change to the standard sprites that I was going to attempt to do today which is just fantastic. The old roboport and Accumulator carriage will have to be upgraded as well as they don't fit the style now. The only issue is the strange orange tinge to the edge of the storage carriage that has come from the re-colouring that looks really out of place when the carriage is moving. It works well on the other 2 carriages just not with the yellow/orange. I'll upload the new version in a few minutes so you can check it all out in game.

Perhaps its possible to place it over the wagon and have it animate when needed?

Yeah. I hope so. I am actually avoiding this issue because I think the answer is that it is not possible to update the position and orientation of the sprites at run time without moving the object itself and if that's the case it will make it very hard. Most of the other issues I am coming up against have a nice clean easy solution so I am sticking to them.

Edit: New version posted if you want to see you work in action! Now to get to work on powered rail.

Second Edit: The electric loco looks really awesome driving around

[Vitduo]

New graphics looks cool but... An archive is too large. Can you compress it?

[Allotrope]

New graphics looks cool but... An archive is too large. Can you compress it?

The biggest archive available on this thread is about 37 MB. Are you getting an error that it is too large? I'm unsure of what you mean.

[Vitduo]

No, I just have bad internet connection with small traffic limit and this archive too "heavy" for me

[Allotrope]

No, I just have bad internet connection with small traffic limit and this archive too "heavy" for me

Ahh, gotcha. Unfortunately, I am unable to compress it much further. JamesOFarrell may be able to.

[JamesOFarrell]

No, I just have bad internet connection with small traffic limit and this archive too "heavy" for me

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B5wuQo ... sp=sharing

This is 5 meg smaller. I did it by taking out a few unused sprite sheets I had in there but be warned they will be back in the next version as they will be needed. There is not much we can do about the size as the wagon sprites are 4.4 megs a pop so for every new wagon we add we get another 4.4 megs of png loving.

[Allotrope]

I've edited the color of the yellow carriage. I tried to tone down that orange color. It was fugly.
- I also re-colored the 'black'' carriage. It's now a dark gray.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B3eGWN ... sp=sharing

I'm trying to figure out a way to identify the accumulator. It could just be blue, but really it needs a new model along with the roboport carriage. I added an electric effect to the sprites, but it only moves when the train is moving(changing orientation). Is it possible to make an animated overlay for when it is moving along straight sections? Or a separate sprite sheet for when it is straight up/down, left/right?

http://gfycat.com/MenacingBlaringCockatiel

[FreeER]

be warned they will be back in the next version as they will be needed.

well, as far as new versions go, you could have a separate download with only the new files (so people don't redownload the ones that haven't changed)...doesn't help the initial download but, perhaps an improvement for those in Vitduo's situtation